China | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Mystery Object #28: Imperial Examination Cheat Sheet Socks

February 3, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

Late last week while going through some of my photos for a talk on China, I came upon some images I took while visiting the Jiangnan Imperial Examination Museum in Nanjing (江南贡院) a few of years back—part of a small case displaying elaborate attempts at cheating on the imperial examinations. The photos were of some knee-high leggings completely covered with neatly hand-written characters—including the soles of the feet! I was very impressed at the detail, the care and the attention […]

Categories: Mystery Objects • Tags: cheat sheet, cheating, China, imperial examination, jiangnangongyuan

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Hanging “Public Relations Advertisements” (Propaganda Displays)

November 4, 2018 by Museum Fatigue

Yesterday, for the first time ever I passed some workers installing one of the many displays of the “Core Values of Socialism” that have proliferated around the city over the past few years. The Core Values can be found in numerous formats (paper posters, painted on surfaces, printed on surfaces, carved in stone and displayed or projected visually) and in a wide variety of locations (at street intersections, at bus stops, on construction barriers, on or in busses, in taxis, […]

Categories: Advertising, Scripts • Tags: China, marketing, propaganda poster

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Mystery Object #23: Menu of Fake Stuff

April 24, 2016 by Museum Fatigue

This morning while cleaning my office I found an item I collected a few years ago while in Shanghai which I immediately thought should be considered a Mystery Object. It is a “menu of fake stuff” that I acquired from one of the many salespeople of knockoff consumer goods who troll the length of Nanjing Road. To walk the street as a foreigner is to be constantly accosted by the salespeople who slide up next to you, flip out a […]

Categories: Fakes and Forgeries, Mystery Objects • Tags: China

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Museum Fatigue Reads, July 12, 2014

July 11, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

The Origins of Office Speak The Affective Economy: Producing and Consuming Affects in Deleuze and Guattari The Case Against the Sharing Economy Laurie Taylor on the endangered art of ethnography Sidney D. Gamble Photographs How China’s Selden Map Rewrote History Digital Resources for Sinologists 1.0 Future Islands MET Museum Collection Online Brazilian Man Becomes Korean After 10 Plastic Surgeries We Are All Made of Stars How Did We Get Here (University Hall) at this Point of Time (the “Anthropocene”)? The […]

Categories: Museum Fatigue Reads • Tags: bodies, China, drones, ethnography, faculty, higher education, internet, jobs, language, Photography, rolling coal, sharing economy, virtual life

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Anti-Cheating Posters on Chinese University Campus

June 26, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

A few days ago I just happened to be visiting a university campus in the outskirts of Shanghai during the beginning of finals week. Along one wall in the lobby of the teaching building I noted a number of very interesting posters discouraging cheating on tests. Done in different styles they all had a singular message—don’t cheat on your finals. I imagined how a similar set of posters posted on an American campus would be received by students taking tests […]

Categories: Education, Surveillance • Tags: cheating, China, final exam, posters, testing

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“Care the Brand, Share the Dream”: The New Words of China’s “Foreign” Brands

June 22, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

In China one often hears the lament that China has no great globally recognized brands. While China may be the world’s workshop, the absence of name brand products desired in international markets is seen as an indication of not having quite reached the next rung of the market capitalist developmental ladder. Chinese may make products, but don’t create great brands. This, of course, stands in stark opposition to the fervor with which China’s new wealthy classes snap up objects of […]

Categories: Consumption, Cosmopolitanism, Language • Tags: brands, China, Chinese brand names, fashion, name brand products

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Urban Demolition: Jiuyanqiao, Chengdu, June 2014

June 19, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

My hotel room offered a nice perspective on the demolition of the building next door. The bulldozers were tearing down an old Mao-era building clearing the space for future redevelopment. No doubt the space will become something like the other buildings near it—perhaps a shopping mall, office building or hotel. Off in the distance, across the bridge and to the right is the “preserved” old buildings of the entertainment “bar street.” I remember when the original Jiuyan Qiao was demolished in […]

Categories: Ruins, Space • Tags: Chengdu, China, demolition, 拆

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Moon Nostalgia

December 21, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

This past week there have been quite a few articles focusing on the breakthroughs, accomplishments and historical firsts of the manned Apollo missions. Among my favorites are a recent article in Slate telling the interesting, untold story of the first sculpture on the moon and coverage of the influential 1968 Earthrise photo and how it almost didn’t happen. Popular Science ran an article about alternate Apollo mission plans. The Verge reminded us all of the Apollo Image Atlas with its 17,000 photos and […]

Categories: Memory, Mythologies, Nostalgia • Tags: 1968, Apollo 11, Apollo 8, Apollo missions, China, 玉兔, Earthrise, Mao Zedong, moon landing, Neil Armstrong, space missions, yutu

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An OFF Pocket™ for Sensitive Fieldwork?

December 16, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

I like the idea of privacy. When you carry a mobile phone, regularly check in to Twitter, often update your Facebook, or use Google products, however, privacy really can’t be much more than that—an idea, a dream, a conceptual ideal. So, earlier this year when I read about Adam Harvey’s Kickstarter project, the OFF Pocket™, I immediately loved the idea—a black pocket that you drop your phone into to disconnect it, shield it from the network, quiet its connectivity. It was […]

Categories: Fieldwork, Gear, Privacy, Review • Tags: Adam Harvey, anthropologist, bag of holding, China, eavesdropping, iPhone, Kickstarter, mobile phone, OFF Pocket™, reporter

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“Red Dawn: Death By China” or “Confronting The Red Communist-Totalitarian Job-Stealing Dragon”

August 18, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

I had been writing a reaction to the newly released movie trailer for the remake of the 1984 classic Red Dawn, when this morning I saw the trailer for Peter Navarro’s new documentary Death By China. Like a song that you can’t get out of your head, Death By China hijacked my thinking about Red Dawn. I couldn’t go on writing because whenever I wanted to think about Red Dawn, Death By China was already there. The films fused into a single film in my […]

Categories: Movies • Tags: China, Communism, Death By China, entertainment, movie trailer, peter navarro, Red Dawn